Everyone should try clean eating. For many of you, even a small lifestyle shift would make a huge difference to your life. Here at Healthy Lifestyles Living we believe your health should be your top priority if you truly want to live a happy, balanced and high performing life. If it is your priority, then you need to be looking at making changes to your lifestyle until you get it right. You’ll know when its at its best when your health and energy levels feel awesome. Remember just a small lifestyle shift can make a big difference.
“Healthy people eating healthy food should never need to take an antibiotic.”
Joel Fuhrman
Most of you are already very much aware that you should eat healthier and be more active than you are, but the simple truth is, you don’t! Life gets in the way, right. Many eat for convenience and find all manner of excuses as why they just can’t fit any meaningful exercise in today, tomorrow or well, ever! Your health matters, and this sort of attitude is like playing Russian roulette with your life. It is time to change.
Today, I want to introduce you to clean eating. It requires a lifestyle shift, but one worth making. When I talk about clean eating I’m nor referring to the version that so many years ago seemed to be the trendy diet, where most of your calories came through a blender and you drank them down. Health in a glass, 5 a day in one or two gulps. I don’t see clean eating being that at all.
Clean eating is simply eating good, quality, healthy foods and cutting out unhealthy choices. So in essence clean eating is a lifestyle shift and not a diet. Shifting away from bad choices and focusing on eating clean. By clean I’m referring to foods that haven’t been processed nor filled with additives or preservatives.
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Michael Pollan
The bible tells us to nourish our bodies and souls with nutritional and spiritual food. In Genesis we are told “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” So generally speaking you should be eating raw state foods from the ground, trees and sea. Remember it isn’t only me telling you this is the healthy thing to do.
Making this lifestyle shift, will provide your body with the essential nutrients it needs and restore the natural balance within your body’s systems, resulting in increased energy levels and an improved immune system and mental wellbeing. Not bad by simply changing what you eat.
Why is clean eating important? Well our current normal diet is slowly poisoning us, much of the food on offer to us today is nutritionally substandard.
So what food is best for clean eating.
1. Load Up on Fruits and Vegetables
Most of your daily calories should be coming from plant-based, natural foods. Yep we are talking about Fruit and vegetables! You should eat at least five portions every day, if not a lot more. Fresh is best frozen, tinned or dried is fine. Fruit and vegetables are a good source of vitamins and minerals, including folate, vitamin C and potassium. They’re an excellent source of dietary fibre, which can help to maintain a healthy gut and prevent constipation and other digestion problems. A diet high in fibre can also reduce your risk of bowel cancer. These health benefits are the result of clean eating, munching on fruit and vegetables gives you the best chance of avoiding the risk of chronic disease, and as an added benefit, it is very unlikely you’ll put on weight. For many moving to a clean diet, making this lifestyle shift, can help you to restore your health.
“The more colorful the food, the better. I try to add color to my diet, which means vegetables and fruits.”
Misty May-Treanor
2. Go Whole Grain
All whole grain kernels contain three parts: the bran, germ, and endosperm. Each section contains health-promoting nutrients. The bran is the fiber-rich outer layer that supplies B vitamins, iron, copper, zinc, magnesium, antioxidants, and phytochemicals. Phytochemicals are natural chemical compounds in plants that have been researched for their role in disease prevention. The germ is the core of the seed where growth occurs; it is rich in healthy fats, vitamin E, B vitamins, phytochemicals, and antioxidants. The endosperm is the interior layer that holds carbohydrates, protein, and small amounts of some B vitamins and minerals. It is all healthy stuff that your body needs. Only through whole grain will you get all the benefit. Other grains go through processes that make them lose much of their goodness. I personally have seen incredible benefit from simply cleaning up my diet by eliminating white bread, pasta and rice and replacing them with whole-wheat bread, pasta and rice. So just remember brown is best.
“People eating the western diet of heavily processed food, of lots of meat and added sugar and added fat, and very little whole grains and fruits and vegetables. Populations who eat that way have seriously high incidences of chronic diseases.”
Michael Pollan
3. Eat Less Meat
If you are someone who enjoys tucking into a juicy steak, there’s a long list of reasons why you shouldn’t according to new research. I used to be. I was one of the worst meat eaters. Red meat daily, bacon and sausage for breakfast frequently. Knowing what I do now, there wouldn’t have been any surprise that I went through the period of bad health as I did. I was poisoning myself by the diet I had. Consuming animal flesh takes a terrible toll on human health, taxing your digestive system and increasing your risk of life-threatening disease. You want proof, vegetarians have lower rates of obesity, coronary heart disease and high blood pressure. A meat-free diet helps you live longer as well as drastically improving your quality of life by helping you stay fitter, healthier and feeling. Let me make this very clear. Eating processed meat is associated with a higher risk of colorectal cancer and processed and red meat may also increase people’s risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. I assure you the benefits of plant-based eating are huge.
“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
Albert Einstein
4. Avoid Processed foods
Having already attempted to put you off all animal flesh especially processed meats, I’ll carry on in the same vein and warn you of the perils of all processed foods. Examples of common processed foods include: breakfast cereals, cheese, tinned vegetables, savoury snacks, such as crisps, sausage rolls, pies and pasties; meat products, such as bacon, sausage, ham, salami and pate; convenience foods, such as microwave meals or ready meals. cakes and biscuits. Processed foods are bad without exception. They are a major contributor to obesity and illness around the world. Most are jam packed with ingredients you can’t spell, filled with chemicals you can’t even pronounce. That’s what processed foods are. Foods that have been changed in some way, shape, or form, that have all sorts of things added like preservatives, colours, dyes and chemicals. Equally as bad is the fact processed foods often have an excess salt, sugars and fats. As clean eating means natural, healthy foods then you are strongly advised to eliminate processed foods entirely.
“Any food that requires enhancing by the use of chemical substances should in no way be considered a food.”
John H. Tobe
5. Limit sugar
Many studies show that sugar can have devastating effects on your health that go way beyond its calorie content. It can lead to insulin resistance, high triglycerides, increased levels of the harmful cholesterol and increased fat accumulation in the liver and abdominal cavity. Not surprisingly, sugar consumption is strongly associated with some of the world’s leading killers… including heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer. Sugar comes from what you put in your tea or coffee, the pop and other sugar-sweetened beverages you drink, and the processed foods you consume. The best way to avoid sugar is to carefully read your food labels and ingredient lists to ensure that added sugars are not included.
“If your diet is persistently high in sugars – increasingly common in modern life – your insulin levels will be spiking frequently, eventually your body can become resistant to insulin, taking blood-sugar levels sky high and causing diabetes.”
Bupa Global Medical Director Dr Amit Sethi
6. Limit Salt
Most people eat too much salt. A diet high in salt can cause raised blood pressure, which can increase your risk of heart disease and stroke. Cutting down on sodium reduces your risk of heart disease and stroke, so surely again this is a no brainer. Think twice before flavouring the foods you eat, and again its important that you look at labels on everything you consume to check on the amount of salt they contain.
“Reducing dietary salt is one of those rare interventions that has a huge health benefit”
Lee Goldman
7. Limit Fat
The dietary reference intake (DRI) for fat in adults is 20% to 35% of total calories from fat. That is about 44 grams to 77 grams of fat per day if you eat 2,000 calories a day. Most of you I have no doubts eat way more than this. My healthy lifestyle plan shows that in truth we shouldn’t eat more than 1o grams at any meal. It is recommended to eat some unsaturated fats mainly from plant-based sources or fish. Its best to keep low our consumption of saturated fats and totally avoid trans fats.
“All fats do not behave the same way in your body, and certain fats, including the omega-3 fats in salmon and other fatty fish and the monounsaturated fats in nuts, virgin olive oil, and avocados, are integral to a healthy diet.”
Harley Pasternak
Hopefully, these tips have inspired you to clean up your diet. Isn’t it time for you to start cleaning up your diet, eating healthier and feeling better try out these 7 tips.
Our mission at Healthy Lifestyles Living is to enlighten, inspire, heal and empower you to achieve a more balanced and healthier lifestyle. Your starting point is to take our Quiz and see how healthy or unhealthy your lifestyle is right now. https://www.healthylifestylesliving.com/health/healthy-lifestyle/healthy-lifestyle-quiz/
If things are that bad then you need to be working with me to identify the changes you need to make. Check out my coaching page here https://www.healthylifestylesliving.com/healthy-lifestyle-coaching/ then book a free session with me.
“Those who have no time for healthy eating will sooner or later have to find time for illness.”
Edward Stanley
Score Your Way To Good Health - With Our Healthy Lifestyle Plan
Score your way to good health with our healthy lifestyle plan and it's unique 70 point weekly scorecard!
